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Water
Water is one the most currently debated geographic issues in the
California Channel region today. The population based has expanded far beyond the locally available water supply, and at the beginning of the 20th century, dark, smoky room deals were made to channel water from the Colorado River to southern California to promote massive development. Lives were lost, fortunes made, and several ecosystems irreparably damaged in the process of bringing water to California’s expanded southern populations.
In recent years the State Water project has begun pumping water from
Northern California down into southern California. These artificial sources of water have changed the region's population base, development patterns, and the natural environment permanently. Lost have been the local natural plants and animals that once thrived in the streams and tributaries of the natural watercourses – crowded out by development or worse, poisoned to death by industrial and residential pollution. Gone also are vast stretches of Colorado River canyons and Northern California natural environments as the water is robbed from its original sources to be redirected to feed the expansive growth in southern California.
In prehistoric times –and during the early years of European and
American colonization, there were actually salmon in the Santa Ynez River ! Abundant salmon that returned to spawn each year, entering the river near Point Conception. And the streams that flowed into the sea at Gaviota, Refugio and other points down the coast also supported steelhead trout and salmon populations that were an important element in the early ecosystem of the region. Changes in water use patterns – the building of damns that choke off the water paths to the sea, and are impenetrable during the remarkable upstream spawning cycle of these fish, have brought an end to thousands of years of natural aquatic life cycles.
Entire estuaries have been nearly filled with earth to build airports
and industrial enters in California’s growing cities. For example, the rich environment of the Goleta slough – where fresh mountain stream waters met the Pacific – was lost in the building of he Santa Barbara airport in the 1920s. This was the site where Spanish explorers found one of the largest Native American cities in California – thousands of people were living on island mounds that were surrounded by streams coursing to the seas. The estuary was rich with wildlife – birds, frogs, fish – and was the basis for the Chumash ability to live directly from the land with out a need to develop agricultural practices – they lived by hunting and gathering in this prolific natural environment. When the airport was built, the mounds were leveled – invaluable artifacts were lost – the streams were blocked, and now only a small trickle of water compared to its previous rich wetlands still reaches the sea.
If we were to see the Channel region in prehistory, its watercourses
would look very different than today. The natural streams and river networks were sufficient to support thousands of Chumash and Gabrielinos for generations. But it would not have been able to support the massive development that has occurred since California became a member of the United States. ( Camp Internet headquarters, by the way, run off of well water in the Santa Ynez Valley as an effort to maintain a traditional balance between land use and water consumption ).
The Ocean as a Geographic Factor
The sea itself has tremendous influence on the nature of the region’s
geography. The pounding surface is changing the shoreline very day. And in the El Nino years – seven year cycles of unusual weather patterns – entire stretches of coastline can be reshaped as cliffs fall, natural arches are lost, and the coastline changes. The surf moves entire beaches, throws massive rocks at will, and delivers more than 90% of American goods to the shores of this country. It is a natural and an economic force with tremendous consequences on our lives in many ways.
What happens when people try to change the coastal geography ? For
example, the Santa Barbara breakwater was built to form a more protective harbor on the mainland. Rocks were quarried on the islands and brought to the mainland to form the jetty that protects the ships anchored in the Santa Barbara harbor. But this jetty has caused massive changes in the shoreline. The beaches that used to exist above and below the jetty have lost their natural contours – some almost completely robbed of sand. The harbor itself is so inundated with sand that should have moved along in its natural path, that millions of dollars are spent dredging the harbor each decade to keep the harbor open.
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